Composite picture of the middle of the Perseus galaxy cluster. Red is the radio emission obtained by LOFAR. Blue is X-rays by the Chandra telescope. White is hydrogen from the H-alpha map of the WIYN telescope. And the background is the night time sky in optical mild from the Hubble telescope. Credit: LOFAR/Chandra/WIYN/Hubble/Frits Sweijen
Through the intelligent use of two forms of telescopes, a crew of researchers has produced beautiful photos of clusters of galaxies. This not solely produces lovely photos, but additionally supplies extra details about the large quantities of power launched round supermassive black holes in clusters. The astronomers, led by Ph.D. scholar Roland Timmerman (Leiden University, the Netherlands), will quickly publish their methodology within the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Astronomers have lengthy recognized that supermassive black holes on the facilities of galaxies produce big jets. These jets shoot away from the black gap and warmth the fuel within the wider environment. When the jets collide with fuel, they kind big lobes tens of 1000’s of light-years in diameter. It can take tons of of thousands and thousands of years for these lobes to fade out. Thus, in principle, at the least, the lobes give astronomers lots of data concerning what occurred in a cluster.
The drawback, nonetheless, is that the knowledge is troublesome to extract from the lobes. An worldwide crew of astronomers has now put an finish to that. They mixed measurements from the radio telescope LOFAR, whose core is within the Netherlands, with these from the X-ray satellite tv for pc Chandra.
Whole better than sum
“That mixture supplies a significantly better thought of what’s going on,” explains researcher Roland Timmerman (Leiden University, the Netherlands).
“It’s cliché, however the entire is absolutely better than the sum of the elements right here. Chandra and LOFAR can individually make a fairly cheap guess in regards to the quantity of power injected by the black gap into the cluster atmosphere, however collectively they’re even stronger. Previously, this mix was not doable as a result of no radio photos had been accessible with ample high quality to match Chandra’s X-ray photos. Because LOFAR antenna stations at the moment are situated all through Europe, the decision is excessive sufficient.”
The astronomers now have radio photos which might be comparable in sharpness to visible-light photos from the Hubble telescope. To reveal their method, they imaged the Perseus cluster. That is a gaggle of greater than a thousand galaxies situated about 240 million light-years within the course of the northern constellation Perseus.
Meanwhile, astronomers are creating composite photos of different clusters of galaxies. With the underlying knowledge, they hope to know extra in regards to the interactions between galaxies and their environment within the early universe.
Help discover the situation of newly found black holes within the LOFAR Radio Galaxy Zoo venture
More data:
R. Timmerman et al, Measuring cavity powers of energetic galactic nuclei in clusters utilizing a hybrid X-ray-radio methodology. A brand new window on suggestions opened by subarcsecond LOFAR-VLBI observations, Astronomy & Astrophysics (2022). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202243936
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2207.05088
Provided by
Netherlands Research School for Astronomy
Citation:
Clusters of galaxies simpler to view with radio X-ray mixture (2022, October 17)
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